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How to turn of the the automatic brightness control on systems that shipped or upgraded to Windows 8.1 to address screen flicker

Article Summary: This article provides information on "How to turn off the automatic brightness control on systems that shipped or upgraded to Windows 8.1 to address screen flicker."

Screen flicker and other reasons to turn off the ambient light sensor.

Ambient Light Sensors (ALS) are an automatic feature designed to balance battery life, with optimal display brightness, by detecting the light present in the systems environment and adjusting the display accordingly. While battery life is increased, there are situations where manually controlling the brightness is desirable.

Users familiar with the location for enabling and disabling ALS has will discover a change in Windows 8.1. Older utilities designed to incorporate the ALS interface have been retired in Windows 8.1 (Quickset or Backlitkb.exe for example).

How to disable the ambient light sensor in Windows 8.1

NOTE: Updating to the current system BIOS on some system models may allow this issue to be addressed from the BIOS (EG: Vostro 5470 BIOS version A06 added an ON OFF feature for automatic brightness.)

The steps to disable the ambient light sensor in Windows 8.1 are listed below:

Press the Windows + X key to open the quick jump menu. Click or tap Power Options.

In Power Options, Click or tap Change plan settings (hyperlink on the right side) for whatever plan you are using.

Click or tap Change advanced power settings.

Scroll down to the Display section, click or tap the + in front of Display and Enable adaptive brightness.

Choose Off for whichever power situation the you desire to control manually, (battery or AC), or both.

Click or tap and OK to save and close. Then close any remaining open windows.

On systems equipped with Intel Display Power Saving Technology (DPST) you may also need to complete these additional steps:

Right click on the battery icon in the systray.

Click Dell Extended Battery Options from the menu.

Under Dell Intelligent Display, click on Configuration and turn this feature off.

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